[AUDIGUIER, Vital d’]. A Tragi-comicall History of our Times, under the borrowed Names of Lisander, and Calista. London, Printed by H[umphrey] L[ownes] for George Lathum … 1627.
Folio, pp. [4], 247, [1], with a wide woodcut border to the title-page (slightly cropped at outer edge) and numerous woodcut headpieces and initials in the text; title-page somewhat browned and slightly frayed, the odd signature dampstained, rust-hole to Q3 touching one letter; contemporary blind-ruled calf, rebacked somewhat insensitively, hinges reinforced with paper, new front pastedown; a good reading copy; early inscription to title-page ‘February the 15 of 1661 Recd for this Book 4s at the Returne 3s-6d witness my Hand / R. Horsman’, armorial bookplate of James Stanley, tenth earl of Derby, dated 1702.
First edition in English of this French romance (Histoire trage-comique de nostre temps, sous les noms de Lysandre et Caliste, Paris, 1616). The ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ is signed ‘W.D.’, probably the ‘William Duncumb of Basleden’ to whose wife the translation is jointly dedicated.Young, passionate Lisander falls in love with Calista, the beautiful wife of the Parisian merchant Cleander, and in order to woo her, becomes Cleander’s friend; he succeeds in arranging a secret rendezvous, but, interrupted by Cleander, he is forced to flee when his pistol goes off accidentally. Having, briefly, proven his prowess in the army of Prince Maurits in the Netherlands, Lisander is attacked by four unknown men and seriously injured. During his curious convalescence he undertakes a pilgrimage to Montserrat in Spain, where he encounters Cleander, newly released from the captivity of Barbary pirates. The unlikely circumstances continue, with duels, a tournament in King James’s London, shipwreck on Jersey, and a quintuple marriage; with some judiciousness, the translator omits the bizarre final sequence in which a prophetic obelisk emerges from the earth, and draws a veil over the sweets of the wedding-night, in which the original revelled.
Audiguier was a soldier, courtier and debauchee, who turned to literature after a wayward youth, writing five romances and translating the Novelas exemplares of Cervantes. His penchant for duels (he composed the present romance while recovering from his injuries) lead to a treatise on the subject, and ultimately to his death in a quarrel in 1624.
Lysandre et Caliste, Audiguier’s third romance, was his most popular (with 31 French editions before 1800), and was considered by the seventeenth-century literary historian Tallemant des Réaux as ‘une des plus agréables nouvelles de notre pays’. Two further editions of this English translation followed, in 1635 and 1652, and there were translations into Dutch, German and Italian by the end of the century.
STC 906.
£600
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